MAL Ep. 27
Returning to town with the evidence they gathered from the swamp house, the party proceeded to build their coalition in Hastenport. 1) Kit informed the party that the leviathan they drove off had come swimming past the harbor, terrifying the sailors and the residents but apparently not attacking anyone. You didn't get much more information about this--Kit is not so good at Jon's "5 W's" thing yet. ("Who-- a big ass sea monster! What-- swimming past the coast! Where--I think it came from the north. When-- 20 minutes ago. Why-- um, maybe it was awakened by... nuclear radiation? Yeah, and now it wants revenge on humanity! I bet that's it!" XD ) 2) After sleeping, the party went to the police station and reported to Captain Black. She agreed with Zadkiel's plan to take the information the party had amassed to the Temple of Sesharet. She conjectured that the name "Mariska" which was found written on the wall in dried blood might have referred to Mariska Hill, a farmwife who went missing during the shiver epidemic a month and a half ago, who might have become a victim or collaborator of Ander's. Pressed by Tisha, Black mentioned another local who disappeared more recently, a village ne'er-do-well named Garret Tanner. He matches the general description of the sacrifice victim Red and Zadkiel saw in their vision, and disappeared a week ago, which would fit with the tracking information Aler and Red got. 3) The party then went to the Temple of Sesharet and met with the acting priestess Mayalei again, presenting her with the sum of their evidence against High Priest Ander. Increasingly alarmed by this information, Mayalei called in the temple elders and assumed leadership of the temple, then led the priests down to the pavilion where they summoned an Aspect of Sesharet to chase down the leviathan. Mayalei asked the party for more information about the cult in the sewers, which they did not have. Some of the party members remembered the goblin maintenance man they had encountered in the sewers and paid no mind last time, and determined to speak with him again. 4) Zadkiel secured Mayalei's agreement to meet with the other head clerics Thursday night to discuss the danger posed by the League of Snakes. 5) Red, meanwhile, was organizing a meeting at Jon's house (newly christened "The Piper's House") in one week's time for their allies to plan their defense against the League of Snakes and also hopefully to make a deal with the King of Clocks. She sent animal messengers to the Druid groves and to the elves, as well as getting the agreement of the party's other allies in Hastenport. 6) The party paid a visit to Aldrayeth, who told them that the pocket dimension whose gate they had left at the Mage's Guild for study has become greatly unstable, "as if the magic that created its bubble has been disrupted." She suggested bringing in a colleague from the Third Eye, which the party was gung ho about until one of them remembered to ask what his name was and yep, it was Holden (the Eyeman Dayant Arakin had sent a letter to, who Zadkiel's Commune spell confirmed as "associated with" the League of Snakes. Of course, as Aldrayeth says, Commune spells are problematic in that they tend to respond to ambiguous questions with binary answers. "Associated with" the League of Snakes could mean a lot of different things.) The party left the illithid ritual scroll with Aldrayeth to study, but asked her not to share the scroll with Holden, to which Aldrayeth agreed. 7) Tanya expounded at length on an idea she had to "buy time" against the Invasion by spreading the news in the Abyss that Chavalk is leading an attack against Malachi, thus trying to trick other demons into disrupting his plans. Tisha was sharply dismissive of this idea: "What is it with you fey? Making a situation more complicated does NOT constitute solving it. Other demons would be as likely to hear that news and join Chavalk as to hear it and decide to attack him." The party concluded that they did like the modified idea of identifying potential Abyssal enemies of Chavalk, however, and attempting to use those against him. 8) The party visited Vanessa, where Aler told her of his intentions to travel to the Underdark. Vanessa reiterated that House Ken'rae was dangerous to Aler, as is her own House De'Afin. She recommended that he "draw on your roots a little and LIE to them." Aler asked her advice about pretending to be from a different house versus disguising himself as a surface elf, and Vanessa thought the latter was safer. She also told the party some information about illithid potions--the second one you found has a solution she has seen used before in healing draughts, but that doesn't mean it isn't actually a deadly poison or something, since the solution itself is merely a catalyst for the psionic process. Vanessa recommended testing it by feeding it to someone expendable. 9) The party went to see Barris and Morgana, learning that the Bow of the Dog Soldier recovered from the pocket dimension is a fey artifact made from an expensive and very magical ore Barris called "stargold." Apparenly such weapons are able to bypass damage reduction and deflection. Jon recalled a legend about an ancient gnollish queen aligned with the Fey who slew a bone dragon with a mystical golden bow. 10) The party went to visit Seven, and found her selling a book to Head Seeker Lorinell, who wished to talk to Adriel about Chavalk's attack on her childhood village, Berranan. Lorinell wondered why Chavalk would have led a demonic host against this village, and the party brainstormed about that for a while before Lorinell concluded that perhaps Adriel should return to the site of the massacre and search for answers there. She also spoke with Jon about Piper; the group did not share Petros' letter to Ander with her. 11) The party went to talk to Naruah, showing him the crystal skull and feather they found in Ander's house. Naruah didn't recognize the feather, but thought the skull looked like an illithid artifact, and suggested asking the mentalist Anselm about it, though he is a "considerably strange person" who Skenebrax and Aki once tried and failed to communicate with. You also shared the letter you found from the illithid to Ander, and Naruah opined that from context, the "Hrin Fhtamgali" sounds like they must be some clan or organization of illithids to which Skenebrax does not belong. 12) The party located the goblin maintenance man Tinka and questioned him about the cult in the sewers, learning that there was a human in purple robes, several in green robes, and a man in "thief armor" (which he later elaborated as black leather armor.) The robed people came from the tunnel beneath the warehouse which the party already discovered, and the guy in thief armor came through a secret door in "sector 8," in the northwest of the docks district. 13) The party located the secret door and used a Knock spell to open it, revealing a winding passage with a spongy floor in a snakeskin pattern that made them feel cold and uneasy and drained their hit points. Bay was unable to ever find a mechanism to turn this trap off, which she found perplexing. The party absorbed the damage and used Wood Shape to punch through a barred wooden door into a room with a large ornate disk with a snake's eye in the center, a reflective floor, metal skulls that jetted fire at you when disturbed, and black and gold tapestries that seemed to ripple in an unsettling way whenever touched. After some trial and error and a grievous burn to Khirg's hand, the group determined how to activate the snake eye disk to open both a fey portal (clockwise) and an abyssal portal (counter-clockwise.) Vanima Kaimelar was able to describe what she saw on the other side of the portal, but after some discussion the group decided neither to send her through to explore it alone nor to send Tisha through to the Abyss. The party now knows how to safely operate the portal for the future, however. 14) The party went up the shaft into an ordinary and deserted-seeming rowhouse, where they found only a few books written in an unknown language, some women's jewelry (which I think nobody took,) a magical picture which showed each viewer a portrait of their own family, and no scent trail. The party guessed this might be a hideout of Harasket's, since he has no scent and would be able to freely traverse the trapped hallway without taking damage. They went to Captain Black and learned that the home belongs to a Tenarri woman named Tesleen, who has not been reported missing but Black will look into it. 15) After several vague inquiries about whether anyone knew any giants or what the significance of giant guards could be, Red informed the party that her Druid grove had informed her that Barken the dwarf necromancer had been arrested for practicing necromancy and taken to a secret holding facility near Oak Ridge--a tower guarded by giants. Tisha reacted strongly to this, saying that secret Ducal prisons of which the feds were unaware was highly illegal, and retreated to communicate with her people in an attempt to determine whether that was in fact the case. Apparently it is. Meanwhile, the group sent a pigeon back to the grove to ask about the tower, wondering if it might be Dayant Arakin's displaced tower; however, it did not match that description. 16) The party decided to travel to Delsin and Berranan, both to the south of Hastenport. Tisha, however, said she would be dealing with the secret prison tower in Oak Ridge, to the north. The party discussed the possibility of going with her and then returning, which they decided would take too much time. Tanya offered to go to the tower with Tisha, and Tisha said she would contact her people to try to scare up some reinforcements. Red brought Tisha to meet Kevin, the King of Clocks, who she had apparently already spoken to late last night about the Barken situation. Kevin was willing to take his mechanical walkers to the tower and break in, but wanted confirmation as to whether or not this was an official government site or not. Receiving the confirmation that it was not, Kevin, Tisha and Tanya began planning their raid, while the rest of the party planned their trip to Delsin. 17) Finally, the group received a cryptic encoded message from Lochrann, who Jon accidentally convinced he likes communicating with in word puzzles. And there we left off for the day. Email me if anyone solves the secret fey message. ;-) Game on!